Living Without That New Car Smell

The other day on Twitter I saw a post from a lawyer saying he and his wife had traded in their second car for a Zipcar membership. On the front page of today’s New York Times is a story raising doubts about whether G.M. and Chrysler can ever prosper again -- even with substantial taxpayer bailouts. Posing the question “Can American drivers live without that new car smell?” Micheline Maynard writes that people are keeping their cars a lot longer than they used to, sometimes choosing not to own a car. Is it possible that cars are no longer the status symbol they once were?

During the ‘60’s, I remember a post card arriving at our home from Aunt Belle. Uncle Maury, a high school principal and former biology teacher, had gotten a summer gig in Wood’s Hole, at the Oceanographic Institute. “We are surrounded by Cadillac’s and maids,” she marveled. My father drove a two tone, light grey and charcoal Desoto at the time, but at our summer home in Lake Mahopac, we too witnessed the Cadillac as status symbol.

That’s not to say members of the Mahopac Woods private beach association didn’t flaunt their success with other pricey cars. Al Feldman, a dentist from Brooklyn with an enormous paunch hanging over his swim trunks and a voice that made it sound like he was just waking up, drove a maroon Lincoln Continental. A lovely blonde whose daughter turned up earlier this year on a list of Bernard Madoff victims, drove a Ford Thunderbird. Mr. Weintraub, a diminutive, down-to-earth entrepreneur who never uttered a word about the fortune he’d been rumored to make, drove a very old Caddie but also a brand new Corvette.

Those were the years when people with lesser brands always felt a tad defensive when they said cars were nothing more than a means of transportation – particularly at Lake Mahopac. The car was a dining room when you went to A&W and ordered burgers, fries, onion rings, and mugs of root beer -- using a speaker that you hooked to your car window. Similarly, the car was a living room of sorts from which you watched movies at the drive-in.

But if my immediate family is any indicator, I think cars are no longer a status symbol. Of necessity, Daphne is still driving the Honda Civic that had 67,000 miles on it when I gave it to her in 2002. There are times when I worry and want to remind her to drive extra carefully on rainy days because it doesn’t have anti-lock brakes.

Dennis, who once drove Lincolns, but also reveled in owning a half-share of a Rolls Royce with his law partner, Peter, is now fine about driving a Geo Prism of indeterminate age and mileage well in excess of 100,000. We jokingly refer to my 2006 Honda Civic, with more parking garage scrapes than I like, as the “family car.”

Though my father always believed one was supposed to get a new car when one’s existing car reaches 70,000 miles, few of us are in a position to do that any more. Though I’m not yet ready to swap the second car for a Zipcar, I think the New York Times' prediction about most people not expecting to purchase a new car any time soon is correct.

Links:

Industry Fears U.S. May Quit New Car Habit

Requiem for Pontiac & Saab (Bonnie's On It)